VARGAS, PETERS AND BULLET-TRAIN BALONEY

The Legislature’s decision last week to spend $5.8 billion building the first segment of the state’s high-speed rail project in the Central Valley is a grand triumph of stupidity over common sense, propelled by fantasy and camouflaged by lies.

That’s why we need explanations from the local Democratic lawmakers who all backed the plan, starting with Sen. Juan Vargas, who is running for Congress in a vacant South County seat. We’d also like to hear from former San Diego City Council President Scott Peters, a bullet-train supporter running against Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-San Diego.

Let’s start with the project’s funding fantasy. Between state and federal commitments, less than one-fifth of the needed $68 billion is in hand. So where will the rest of the money come from?

Private investors won’t put a dime forward without a revenue or ridership guarantee. Such guarantees are illegal under the 2008 ballot measure approved by state voters providing $9.95 billion in bond money toward the project.

The federal government, project supporters assert, will step up. Do those who say this actually read the news coming out of Washington? To reduce a staggering deficit that has this nation on course to spend one-quarter of its budget just in interest on its debt, Congress and President Barack Obama agreed to a broad spending framework that will force huge cuts in domestic and military spending. This sequestration begins Jan. 1.

Vargas and Peters can’t reconcile this with their apparent theory that Congress is going back to the days of just willy-nilly printing money.

Let’s move on to the profitability lies. The 2008 state law says the second segment of the project can’t be built until the first segment breaks even or makes money.

But the Obama administration required the first segment be built in the lightly populated Central Valley because it didn’t want to take on rich communities in Silicon Valley. So how do we ever get the ridership needed to make the first segment cost-neutral or profitable? The answer is: We don’t.

How can Vargas and Peters pretend this isn’t a problem? It’s time to offer up a 2009 quote from one of the world’s biggest bullet-train advocates, Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, director of high-speed rail at the International Union of Railways. While defending high-speed rail’s overall merits, Barrón told The New York Times that “it’s not a profitable business.”

On top of these immense fundamental problems, there’s also a local issue. The $68 billion system doesn’t even include a link to San Diego, as we were promised in the 2008 campaign.

In every public appearance they make from here on out, we hope Vargas, Peters, state Sen. Christine Kehoe and Assembly members Toni Atkins, Marty Block and Ben Hueso are asked about their support of this preposterous boondoggle. If they offer up the funding fantasy and the profitability lies, we hope their responses get the derisive laughter they deserve.